Asylum under Rudd: tough, or just shonky? - Labor is being tougher and more ruthless with asylum seekers than the Howard Government, according to an analysis of decisions made by Immigration Minister Chris Evans, where he rejected 97.6% of intervention applications since coming to power.

Rudd re-opens Derby's Curtin detention hell - With an election looming, Kevin Rudd becomes Howard-lite and his henchman all at once: the memory of the Curtin detention centre awakens fears of torture, vilification, being beaten up by guards and locked in grave isolation compounds.

World Outrage about Kevin Rudd's Big Asylum Freeze - From psychiatrist Jon Juredini to Malcolm Fraser, from human rights lawyer Greg Barns to Andrew Bartlett, outrage swelled fast around Kevin Rudd's processing freeze of Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers, and it went international within a week.

Labor chooses John Howard's Excision Zone - 'Refugee advocates have accused the Federal Government of abandoning its softer approach to asylum seekers.' An expose of Labor's ambivalence about John Howard's shocking refugee exclusion zone and its sneaky choice.

Coal Industry overheats Kevin's Climate - Anna Rose at the 2020 Summit: I found myself in the climate stream with representatives of coal mining companies including Xstrata and Shell, yet not a single person from an environment NGO such as Greenpeace ...

The ALP's me-too refugee policy - Just before the election, Kevin Rudd tells the ABC's 7.30 Report presenter Kerry O'Brien that he's prepared to turn boats back to Indonesia, a policy brazenly in contravention with Australia's obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.

The 2010 Anti-Smuggling Legislation - Do we want to punish smugglers, or secretly close our borders? See Project SafeCom's Senate Submission and share our doubts about this brazen law proposal that would land even Tampa Captain Arne Rinnan in jail as a smuggler.

The unthrown kids - All the photographs of the "children overboard" incident in 2001 - leaked to Project SafeCom after the incident: they show gratefulness. They show fathers who are tired, but moved. They show mothers who smile, in deep love for their children and thankfulness for the rescue...

Hadi Ahmadi: Smuggler or Escape Organiser? - Perhaps it is true that, contrary to what happens on the European smuggling routes and strategies, Australian 'smugglers' cannot and should not be called 'smugglers', because they simply bring refugees home to UN safety in Australia.

Alcatraz Down Under: Christmas Island - The monstrosity is complete. Like a gigantic scar cutting through the pristine wilderness, the Christmas Island detention centre blights not just the hillside of the island, but also the Australian psyche. We now have our own prison island.

Book Launch and Forum:

Antony Loewenstein's My Israel Question

"I can think of few books about Israel and Palestine, written by an Australian, as important as Antony Loewenstein's brave j'accuse. In challenging the propagandists to give up their addiction, he is a truth-teller bar none." (John Pilger)

"Provoking howls of rage even before it was published, this is a passionate account of how one determined lobby shapes politics and stifles debate in this country. It's come just in time" (David Marr)

"What most Australians should do is go out and buy the book and read it, so they can hear both sides of the debate about how Israel treats the Palestinians" (John Mearsheimer)

Project SafeCom Inc.

in collaboration with

The Social Justice Network

presents

Antony's Israel Question

The Official WA Book Launch and a Forum on the issues the book invokes

Related:

16 October 2006: Reporting on the Loewenstein Book Launch and Forum - a page with photos, speeches and articles following the 11 October 2006 Forum on Antony Loewenstein's My Israel Question at Kulcha Multicultural Arts of WA, organised by Project SafeCom, in collaboration with the Social Justice Network.

20 July 2006: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: The Israel Lobby - Yesterday, ABC Lateline reported: "... two leading American academics have sparked a war of words over their claim that US-Middle East policy has become unbalanced because of the activities of a right-wing pro-Israeli lobby, which tries to shut down critics by labelling them anti-Semitic." Here is the "offending" article, from The London Review of Books.

10 February 2006: Worlds apart: Israel, Palestine and Apartheid - After four years reporting from Jerusalem and more than a decade from Johannesburg before that, the Guardian's award-winning Middle East correspondent Chris McGreal is exceptionally well placed to assess an explosive comparison. The first part of his two-part special report.

10 February 2006: Brothers in Arms: Israel's Secret Pact With Pretoria - Israelis have always been horrified at the idea of parallels between their country, a democracy risen from the ashes of genocide, and the racist system that ruled the old South Africa. Yet even within Israel itself....

"This is one of the best treatises which presents in the most lucid way possible why anti-Zionism can not be equated with anti-Semitism. Interweaving personal trips, most valuable information and clear analysis, My Israel Question will serve as an essential guide for those who dare to criticise Zionist wrongdoing in the past and Israeli policies in the present, without being deterred by false allegations of Anti-Semitism." -Dr Ilan Pappe, Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa, Israel, and author of A History of Modern Palestine

"Provoking howls of rage even before it was published, this is a passionate account of how one determined lobby shapes politics and stifles debate in this country. It's come just in time" -David Marr

"What most Australians should do is go out and buy the book and read it, so they can hear both sides of the debate about how Israel treats the Palestinians" -John Mearsheimer, Senior Professor of Politics, University of Chicago

Forum and Book launch: Antony's Israel Question - Flyer for a Forum at Kulcha in Fremantle with journalist, author and blogger Antony Loewenstein. "I can think of few books about Israel and Palestine, written by an Australian, as important as Antony Loewenstein's brave j'accuse. In challenging the propagandists to give up their addiction, he is a truth-teller bar none." (DL Format - prints three, PDF FILE 108 Kb)

Forum and Book launch: Antony's Israel Question - Poster for a Forum at Kulcha in Fremantle with journalist, author and blogger Antony Loewenstein. "I can think of few books about Israel and Palestine, written by an Australian, as important as Antony Loewenstein's brave j'accuse. In challenging the propagandists to give up their addiction, he is a truth-teller bar none." (A4 Poster size, PDF FILE 161 Kb)

Forum participants

Prof Linda Briskman

Linda Briskman is the Dr Harihusa Handa Chair in Human Rights Education at Curtin University. She recently moved to Perth from RMIT University in Melbourne where she pursued research and policy interests in the fields of Indigenous affairs and asylum seekers and refugees. She is convenor of a citizen's inquiry into immigration detention convened by the Australian Council of Heads of Schools of Social Work. As a member of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society she has a long-standing interest in Israel and Palestine.

Dr Samina Yasmeen

Associate Professor Samina Yasmeen is Director of Centre for Muslim States and Societies and lectures in Political Science and International Relations in the School of Social and Cultural Studies, the University of Western Australia (UWA), Perth. She is also a Co-Chair of the Discipline of International Studies at the UWA. Dr Yasmeen is a specialist in political and strategic developments in South Asia, the role of Islam in world politics, and citizenship among immigrant women. She conducted a large scale study on the Settlement Needs of Muslims living in Perth Metropolitan Area in the 1990s. She has also conducted research on Muslim women and Citizenship in Australia.

As a specialist on politico-strategic developments in South Asia, Dr Yasmeen has focused on the role of Islamisation in Pakistan's domestic and foreign policy. Her current research focuses on the role of Islamic militant groups in Pakistan's foreign policy. She has conducted research on groups including Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish Mohammad. [more]

Giz Watson MLC

Giz Watson (WA, MLC, Greens) was elected to the Legislative Council for the North metropolitan Region in 1997 and re-elected in 2001 and 2005. Giz's interest in ecology, peace and social justice led to her involvement in numerous community groups working on coastal and marine issues, urban bushland, community housing and opposition to the arms trade. She is renowned as an energetic and passionate activist. In the UK, Giz trained nonviolent direct action groups for peace camps. These peace camps were instrumental in the removal of US nuclear missiles from the UK.

Prof Gavin Mooney

Gavin Mooney is the Co-convenor of the WA Social Justice Network and Professor of Health Economics at Curtin University, Visiting Professor at the Centre for Health and Humanity at Aarhus University (Denmark) and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town. He has experience working with governments and health departments and agencies in many countries - in addition to Australia, he has worked with health organisations in Denmark, New Zealand, Norway and the UK. He has written widely on various aspects of public health economics and has a strong interest in equity, priority setting and the principles underlying public health. He has acted as consultant to the WHO on many occasions and for the OECD twice.

There are No Monopolies on Suffering

Jamie Glassman is a British Jewish writer on The Ali G show, a comedy program known for intentionally offending deserving establishment figures. Glassman recently attended the Edinburgh Arts Festival and was disturbed. He wrote in the London Times:

"There have always been anti-Semitic jokes. But you know times are changing when you go along to a stand-up show at the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe and you hear audience members shouting 'Throw them in the oven' when the comic suggests kids should stop playing Cowboys and Indians and replace it with Nazis and Jews."

His conclusion was perhaps understandable but thoroughly inaccurate. There was, he noted:

"a growing trend among left-thinking people in this country and around the world to accept as dogma that those on the Left should hate Bush, Blair, American imperialism, Israel and, while we're at it, the Jews. It is a cultural trend that I've found increasingly evident but never before has the Jew-hating element been so overt. This week has confirmed that my Jewish paranoia is not entirely unfounded. As the old saying goes: 'Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.'"

How often do we hear that the Left is infected with a vicious Jew-hatred? And how often do Jews tell each other that every criticism of Israel is driven by a pathological rejection of Israel's right to exist? I'm here to tell those Jews that it's time to stop living like it's 1948. Israeli actions in Palestine and Lebanon are directly contributing to worldwide legitimate criticism of the Zionist state. For a growing number of global citizens, Israel is a pariah. It's about time we discovered why.

Real anti-Semitism does exist, of course. Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported recently that a number of Jewish students at Sydney University had recently suffered verbal and physical abuse and "Kill Jews" had been spray-painted around Sydney. All these acts are unacceptable and patently racist. But none of this means that Jews fear leaving their houses or should remain in ghettos. Many do a pretty good job on their own without needing encouragement.

I wanted my book, My Israel Question, to offer divergent views. I asked the majority of so-called Jewish leaders in Australia for comment, but they either ignored the request or offered verbal abuse. Federal Labor MP Michael Danby announced last August, before the book was finished and without having read any of it, that my publisher, Melbourne University Publishing, should "drop this whole disgusting project" and instructed the Jewish community to not buy the book. The message was clear. The Jewish leadership was petrified of open and honest debate on the Middle East conflict; they simply had too much to lose.

Over two years of writing, researching and spending time in the Middle East and the US--as well as being slammed by simply defending the rights of Palestinian human rights campaigner Hanan Ashrawi after she won the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize--I soon realised that I wasn't being silenced but the issues of Israeli occupation and the Zionist lobby were routinely avoided by the mainstream media. I wanted my book to readdress that imbalance.

Honest debate about Israel and Palestine is sadly lacking in Australia and much of the Western world. It's invariably overly emotive, factually challenged, partisan and counter-productive. Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, atheists and concerned citizens rarely find middle-ground on the most contentious areas, such as Palestinian refugees, the dividing of Jerusalem and the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

Discussing Israel and Palestine is therefore vital in an age of rising fundamentalisms. Labelling critics of Israel as anti-Semitic or anti-Israel merely attempts to silence individuals who passionately believe the current political path of the Jewish state is destined to lead to its disappearance. I share this fear. The simple truth is that Israel's long-term security lies with the Arab world, not a superpower thousands of miles away. A superpower, it should be noted, that has suffered an inglorious and welcome defeat in Iraq and whose reputation in the Arab and Muslim world has never been worse.

Martin Jacques, a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre, writes in the Guardian:

"Israel was created as a result of one of the worst racial atrocities in modern history. It was in part a sense of guilt and sympathy that persuaded the West that it must help the Jews create their own state. From the outset, two factors were always likely to haunt the project; first, it involved the annexation of land that was Arab; and second, it implied the foundation of an ethnic state, with all the exclusivist and racist attitudes that this potentially involved."

For too long, Jews have refused to take responsibility for Israeli actions in Palestine. No longer is it acceptable to argue that ethnic strife is worse in Sudan, Congo or Bosnia. Let's stop changing the subject and face up to some uncomfortable realities. The nearly 40-year occupation has corrupted Israel's soul. On the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Israeli writer Tom Segev explained the sickness:

"The hatred of Arabs has become legitimate. A state in which so many of its citizens survived the Holocaust is supposed to be strict in its observance of democracy and human rights, ironically, the oppression in the territories is encouraging anti-Semitism, and in various places in the world it is even endangering the safety of Jews."

A true supporter of Israel can both love and loathe the homeland. Automatic support only serves to prove that Israel and Jewish Diasporas everywhere are not sufficiently mature to debate this long-standing conflict.

In the few months, we have seen another war initiated by Israel. After destroying much of Lebanon--and Amnesty International said that attacks on civilian targets by Israeli military forces appeared to be deliberate war crimes--the world community has gained an even greater insight into the Israeli establishment's mindset. What has been achieved? The country's first military defeat, over one hundred Israeli soldiers killed, a resurgent Hizbollah and Iran and increased hatred around the world. Some victory. And yet the Australian Jewish community meekly mouths every press release coming from the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

In the occupied territories of West Bank and Gaza, Israeli forces kidnap democratically elected Palestinian leaders. Around 10,000 Palestinians reside in Israeli jails, many never facing trial. Israel does not even respect the international right of these individuals to receive regular family visits. The great Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote recently in Haaretz newspaper how the Jewish state corrupts the legal process when dealing with the Palestinians:

"The Palestinian detainees are led to a military court: The same military establishment that occupies and destroys and suppresses the civilian population is the one that determines that to resist occupation - even by popular demonstrations and waving flags, not only by killing and bearing arms - is a crime. It is the one to prosecute, and it is the one to judge. Its judges are loyal to the interest of defending the occupier and the settler."

The release of My Israel Question has provided great insight into the inability of the Jewish community to handle robust debate on the Middle East dispute. Simply put, the Zionist leadership isn't ready and neither is the community newspaper, the Jewish News. They have preferred to highlight personal gripes, character assassinations and gossip. They've too much at stake to honesty assess their own responsibility in perpetuating the myth that loyal obedience to the Israeli state is the only noble and acceptable face of Diaspora Jewry. They will start to pay dearly for this misnomer in years to come, as the ghetto-mentality worsens proportionate to Israel's falling international standing.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the vast mainstream media coverage offered to the book across print, TV and radio. After five weeks on the shelves, it's already in a 2nd re-printing and a best-seller. A book of this nature is bound to generate varying opinions, and I certainly havn't been disappointed. I've been compared to accused anti-Semite Helen Demidenko by Zionist lobbyist Jeremy Jones in the Jewish News. Sydney Morning Herald's David Marr was kinder and launched the book in Sydney because he believed in "argument - the need for honest, tough, passionate and fair argument about issues that for 50 years have threatened to bring the world to war."

I've received hundreds of supportive messages from Jews and non-Jews in Australia and overseas, desperate to find an alternative to bellicose and bullying Zionism, but I've also copped emails such as the following:

"You might be getting the love and attention from the media now, Antony, but in 5 years time when the world declares war on Jews, and not just Israel as it is now...you'll see where everyone's loyalties (or shall I say prejudices) lie...you'll be going to the concentration camps just like the rest of us...except when you're gassed to death, you won't be going to heaven, you'll be going straight to hell. So enjoy the limelight now.
From a fellow Jew."

But the media has deliberately avoided one of the key findings of My Israel Question, namely the ways in which the Zionist lobby intimidates editors, journalists and board members to silence viewpoints that don't fit their militaristic and pro-Israeli worldview. I spoke a few weeks ago to an editor at one of the country's leading newspapers who told me that elements of the Jewish community, through their persistent aggressive tactics, are in fact contributing to senior journalists growing more sceptical towards the Israeli perspective. Are Zionists listening?

In a recent edition of the Jewish News, so-called Jewish leader Sam Lipski praised Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper for editorially supporting Israel during the recent war in Lebanon. Lipski virtually acknowledged that Israel had lost the war of ideas, and the Jewish state needed all the friends it could get, so "let the record show that in its war of self-defence in 2006, a series of editorials in an Australian newspaper contributed on both counts." It was a startling display of intellectual laziness, though revealed the sickness that pervades the Jewish community.

Lipski argued for uncritical reporting. He encouraged a newspaper that shamelessly ignored the rights of Palestinians, Lebanese and Arabs. And he celebrated perspectives that blindly supported the Jewish state, with no questions asked. Lipski must be a very insecure man if he can't handle criticism of his beloved homeland. Besides, such debate is currently occurring within Israel itself, where a majority of Israelis now realise they lost the recent war against Hizbollah. Lipski's anti-intellectualism was unsurprising for a Jewish leadership that refuses to recognise that we no longer live in 1943 Poland.

Of course, Lipski probably just received his talking points from Australian editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell, who told this week's Jewish News that many critics of Israel, including the Fairfax press, "take the view that Israel is sort of an occupying power and that the Palestinians are freedom fighters who should deserve editorial sympathy." Mitchell said he had spent time in Israel and argued it was difficult to see "how you can pull back without threatening security." He claimed the lands taken by Israel in 1967 were "essentially defensive in nature," despite the fact that the Israeli establishment clearly believed in the original Zionist, expansionist dream; namely, greater dispossession for the Palestinian people. Here's a memo to Mitchell and his cheer-leaders in the Jewish community: Israel is an undisputed occupying power of Palestinian land. "Pulling back", as he puts, is not simply necessary, it's both immoral and illegal to do otherwise.

It's important to acknowledge some realities. There is a Zionist lobby in Australia. It has every right to lobby its position, like every other ethnic group. It certainly does not have the right to bully journalists, editors and politicians. In a recent article in the Australian newspaper, a Jewish rug-seller said that even mentioning the existence of the Zionist lobby is anti-Semitic. The Israelis openly discuss the role of the Zionist lobby in the US.

The mainstream media is largely sympathetic to the Israeli worldview, classing Hizbollah, Hamas and indeed much of the Arab world as "terrorists", and unjustly resisting imperial occupation. Dissenting opinions occasionally permeate the stuffy, largely Anglo offices of Fairfax, News Limited and the ABC, but we need to encourage more Arab, Palestinian and less militant Jewish voices to be heard. Why, for example, isn't there one weekly Arab columnist in any Australian newspaper? It's time to retire the drooling old males that populate opinion pages across the country.

The Jewish community's apparent universal support for Israel right or wrong is far more fragmented than we are led to believe. Many do love the Zionist state, but many also express profound distaste for Israeli actions in the occupied territories. It is now time for those individuals to stand up in public and challenge the dominant narrative. The sight of the Jewish establishment discovering that their Zionist thinking is as tired and irrelevant as their insistence on Jews giving money to planting trees in Israel will be a day to savour.

I believe in a safe and secure Israel and Palestine and I say this as a proud Jew. Let's not wait for the day when support for the Jewish state is largely centred in Washington, London and Canberra. The current militaristic path ensures that Israel is destined to disappear if it doesn't make more friends in the Arab and wider world.